Lore EA sprite
formerly also spright
Old French esprit "spirit"
Latin spiritus (spirit retains the Latin form)
In Middle English and after sprite could mean "breath; the principle of life; the Holy Ghost; mind, intellect; character; mood; reason; human will"
“How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses - with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or the creatures which live in a drop of water... with ears that deceive us by converting vibrations of the air into tones that we can hear, for they are sprites which miraculously change movement into sound, a metamorphosis which gives birth to harmonies which turn the silent agitation of nature into song... with our sense of smell, which is poorer than any dog's... with our sense of taste, which is barely capable of detecting the age of a wine!”
"Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques"
| ~☉~ | lucid definition; added layer of lucidity, or aethereal context |
| ⚜ | classic definition |
| ☣ | artificium definition; usually words which have undergone a warped evolution, or a complete perversion of the original sense |